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An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#151

Post by bombcar »

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #82
jprd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glorious. This must be what is like when old people long for the hot car they lusted for in their youth.

I recall old people being glad that air conditioning was invented.

Life with air conditioning is nice, but life without it wasn't as bad as it is now when the a/c fails.

Cars had vents that would blow outside air right were it was needed without using the heater/fan system, or wing windows that you could direct "relatively quiet" air at you.

Now if your car's a/c fails, you get to roll the window down and that's about it.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#152

Post by mycall »

rasz wrote: post #122
somat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that is interesting, why was that version originaly hosted on 3drealms site? Probably nothing, somebody there just wanted to share a cool picture. But what if that were an early apogee shareware distribution bbs?

it was 3D Realms official BBS https://nitter.privacyredirect.com/ScottApogee/status/159372... Scott Miller - Apogee/3D Realms Founder : >BBS's (bulletin board systems) were the backbone of the online world before the Internet came along in 1995. Apogee teamed up with Dan Linton's BBS, called Software Creations, and we poured $200k+ into it to grow it to nearly 140 call-in nodes with a T3 (high bandwidth) line.

I was lucky enough to have a T1 in 1995 and still think to this day that 1.544 Mbps is enough to do real work.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#153

Post by mycall »

mcculley wrote: post #3

I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed multitasking operating systems for “door” programs. Am I misremembering?

You could just use DoubleDOS [1] to run the BBS in partition 0 and the door could run in parallel in partition 1. This was my setup before Windows 3 and DESQview replaced it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleDOS

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#154

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

>> So then, when you see this picture (and remember, it might only be showing half of the whole setup), do you think "wow, cool, they got to wrangle all of that", or do you think "OMG they had to wrangle all of that"? It's an important distinction to make, and I think someone's gut reaction to this amount of hardware in one place might influence how they approach building new systems.

It's a very good point. Like, I have some stuff that eats up RAM like a, a very hungry thing, so I went online to see if I could buy some old server blade with a couple TB of RAM from ebay. I found a few, refurbished, not in a horrible condition, not prohibitively expensive (I'm not currently funded, as such) and I remember this distinct feeling, like a frisson of excitement at the thought of having access to ~20 times more POWER than I usually have...

... and then I cooled down, didn't buy a server, and instead rented one with "only" 256 GB RAM until I could fix my stuff so that it now runs with up to 8GB on my laptop. Still expensive, but we're getting there.

Morale of the story: don't know. I prefer to find ways to make software go faster than rely on hardware? I get the feeling I'm very alone on this, seeing as everyone's talking about putting nuclear-powered server farms in space and whatnot.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#155

Post by fusslo »

wvbdmp wrote: post #110
Aardwolf wrote: post #26

Office chair technology also has really advanced since then (looking at the chair on the picture, which is commonly seen near computers in photos of this era)

Indeed, the Aeron chair, which became a design classic and the apparently the best-selling office chair ever in the US, only came out in 1994. So about the same time as the web. Not sure if it’s the only office chair design with a dedicated wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeron_chair

probably my least-regretted purchase (excepting my dog) is my used Aeron that I bought in ~2014 for $300. Still use it daily

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#156

Post by hollywood_court »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #135
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

That's not a real BBS. A real BBS is one where you dial in at 20:50 and the sysop's mum answers and says it's not 21:00 yet and you need to call back a bit later when the phone line is switched across to the modem.

That brings back memories. When I was aged 9-12, I made enough money mowing lawns during the summer to afford to have multiple phone lines to support my BBS. I made a bit of money during the fall raking leaves as well. But when winter time came, I had to always disconnect all of the additional lines because I could not afford them.

But I also kept one extra line just for my PC because it was always a pain to dial out to another BBS or chat room when my mother wanted to use the phone to talk to her long distance boyfriend.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#157

Post by mewse-hn »

jprd wrote: post #53
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

Glorious. This must be what is like when old people long for the hot car they lusted for in their youth.

> Glorious. This must be what is like when old people long for the hot car they lusted for in their youth.

Absolutely. The blog post goes to great lengths about why it's stupid to run a cluster, and I run a NAS in my house that has more horsepower than anything from the 90s, but there's a part of me that's still a teenager who wants to run a monster multi-node BBS

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#158

Post by wjnc »

Nobody mentioned the smell of that time yet.

An acrid air, stingy for the first few seconds but then somewhat enjoyable because of the ozon. The smell of stale coffee and cigarettes lingering. The smell of wood for cabinets (instead of pressed and glued materials).

This is how I remember the university where my father worked (more coffee), the teachers room from my moms school (more cigarettes) and the IT department of the university (very strong in the 'IT-smell', but also hard on coffee and sigarettes).

You don't find those smells like that anymore. I'll leave the description of the sound in this room to the next one. This was a loud room!

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#160

Post by ghaff »

mycall wrote: post #153
mcculley wrote: post #3

I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed multitasking operating systems for “door” programs. Am I misremembering?

You could just use DoubleDOS [1] to run the BBS in partition 0 and the door could run in parallel in partition 1. This was my setup before Windows 3 and DESQview replaced it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleDOS [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

DESQview never really clicked with me. Did run DoubleDOS and when I was a TA (or whatever it was) providing support in the computer lab in grad school (most people didn't have their own computers) it was a convenient way to switch between whatever official systems I needed to access and my own stuff.
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